Hadi’s hudud Bill de­ferred

> Mo­tion to be de­bated in next Par­lia­ment sit­ting in March

KUALA LUMPUR: The Pri­vate Mem­ber’s Bill to amend the Syariah Court (Crim­i­nal Juris­dic­tion) (Amend­ment) Act 1965 has been de­ferred to the next Par­lia­ment meet­ing in March.

PAS pres­i­dent Datuk Seri Ab­dul Hadi Awang, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Marang, ear­lier read out an amend­ment to the ini­tial mo­tion to amend the Act in the De­wan Rakyat.

He re­quested to de­fer the mo­tion to the next Par­lia­ment meet­ing in March, say­ing “there are polemics among the mem­bers of pub­lic even though the Act in­volves Mus­lims and the Rulers Coun­cil”.

“I will ex­plain the mo­tion in the next sit­ting,” he added.

The amended mo­tion seeks to in­crease the penal­ties un­der Sec­tion 2 of the Act, which cur­rently stip­u­lates a max­i­mum three-year jail term or a min­i­mum RM5,000 fine or a max­i­mum of six strokes of the cane.

In Hadi’s mo­tion, he has pro­posed to re­place the penal­ties with a max­i­mum of 30 years’ jail or a max­i­mum fine of RM100,000 or 100 strokes, as ad­min­is­tered in line with syariah laws.

Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mu­lia clar­i­fied that Hadi’s pro­posal was not a first read­ing but a no­ti­fi­ca­tion on his amend­ments to the ini­tial mo­tion.

He said the amend­ments do not af­fect the core prin­ci­ple of his mo­tion, thus he could in­sert it.

Datuk Mu­jahid Yu­sof Rawa (Amanah-Parit Bun­tar) asked if the gov­ern­ment would take over the tabling of the amend­ments in the next sit­ting.

“The gov­ern­ment has not said how the process will be with the Bill. In the last ses­sion, there was no de­bate and this led to prob­lems.

“The gov­ern­ment should take proac­tive steps and form a com­mit­tee to look into this. Oth­er­wise, it will cre­ate more ha­tred and con­fu­sion among the pub­lic. Pub­lic dis­course is di­vi­sive,” he said.

Mu­jahid in­sisted for a date on when the gov­ern­ment would take over the Bill.

In ad­di­tion to that, Khalid Sa­mad (Amanah-Shah Alam) had sug­gested that Hadi’s Bill be de­bated.

Var­i­ous Mus­lim NGOs par­tic­i­pated in gath­er­ing in front of the Par­lia­ment build­ing yes­ter­day as show of sup­port to the pro­posed amend­ment to Syariah Court (Crim­i­nal Juris­dic­tion) (Amend­ment) Act 1965.